mama’s got curves part 1: scoliosis surgery and pregnancy

Pregnancy is different for everyone. For me, the first trimester of my pregnancy required my body to work overtime. I threw up from 6 weeks. It started with a bang, throwing up day and night for 24 hours. I wept and mumbled “if this is it, take my life right now Jesus, because I can’t do this.”

Oh it sounds dramatic.

But… unless you’ve been through it (and I’ve talked to many mamas who have) then you will never understand the heaviness of all day nausea and vomiting for months on end. At fifteen and a half week, the vomiting has ceased, but the nausea is still going strong in the evenings.

But it got better. And then it got worse. It got way worse. I threw up so hard, so often, I threw my ribs out. I had to literally press deep into the side of my ribcage where one rib is missing, to be able to breathe and vomit. When it was really bad, I had to call Jay to do it for me. My body isn’t quite able to handle me falling asleep sitting up, so I jammed my tender sacroiliac joint. This is also due to relaxin, the hormone pumping its way around my body, relaxing my joints and ligaments. In my case, relaxin is causing a lot of problems. Just ask my chiropractor or massage therapists.

“You have to keep coming in for treatments—we’ll manage it, but it won’t get better.”

Great.

I feel as if I’m waddling around like I’m 9 months pregnant. I know my body so well, I know all it’s weaknesses. It’s like carrying around a piece of my youth, a reminder that I was broken and in need of fixing.

Around 11 years ago, the phantom grasp of scoliosis wrapped it’s tendrils around my spine, twisting it so severely, I didn’t know what hit me.

X-rays showed this:

 Six months later, eight days after my 16th birthday, I was on an operating table. Twelve hours, two separate incisions later, I was ‘fixed.’ Meaning, I was able to continue living life, and my heart and lungs were no longer in danger of being crushed. But, as anyone who has had surgery knows, you are never quite fixed. Two scars took over my back. One runs laterally down 3/4 of my spinal column, the other curving across my left side, ending just above my hip.

I don’t know what lays ahead for me and our baby in utero, but that’s okay. I know that he or she is happy with the warmth of my womb, and will grow and expand inside my body, and my body will expand with it. My spine won’t curve and offer that bit of extra room, so I’ll most likely be carrying a huge load right out front and lean like the tower of Pisa, or be in a wheelchair (joke). The only major concern I have is if there is a complication and a C-Section is needed. If that is the case, I will most likely have to be put under general anesthetic, and therefore won’t be awake for the birth of my baby.

Nevertheless, this is another season, one of many, that requires me to trust like never before.

Grow baby, grow. I love you.

Read part two of the journey: mama’s got curves part II: scoliosis surgery and